


A Second Time for Everything

by Pink_Tinted_Monocle



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 15:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18897931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pink_Tinted_Monocle/pseuds/Pink_Tinted_Monocle
Summary: “Do you remember the first time we met?” asked Angel, staring into the bottom of his empty glass.Spike snickered.  “Bit hard to forget.  You hit on me and set fire to my hand.”Set in Season 5, between 5x17 ‘Underneath’ and 5x18 ‘Origin’.When Angel and Spike get drunk and reminisce about old times, the memory of one particularly intimate night stirs up some old feelings.





	A Second Time for Everything

“Do you remember the first time we met?” asked Angel, staring into the bottom of his empty glass.

Spike snickered.  “Bit hard to forget.  You hit on me and set fire to my hand.”

“I didn’t _hit_ on you.” Angel protested.

“Oh you _did_.  You were all, ‘Oooh, I’ve spent so long with no-one but women for company, and lately all I’ve been able to think about is having a big strong man come along and shag me into the mattress!”

Angel furrowed his brow and tried to think back to that day through the fug of alcohol clouding his mind.  “I don’t recall it being quite like that.”

“Then you’re remembering it wrong” Spike said bluntly.  He picked up Angel’s empty glass and waggled it beneath his nose.  “Do you want another round?”

It had been a very long week, and it was only Tuesday.  The visions that Cordelia had passed on to Angel kept him up most nights, and his days were filled with the endless tedium of office life; meetings and paperwork and long periods of just sitting around his office staring at nothing and wondering how he had managed to get everything so, so wrong.

So at the end of the next staff meeting when Spike had loudly announced that he was heading off to the pub for a piss-up, Angel had grabbed his jacket and walked across the road with the blond vampire to the Cat and Fiddle.

Spike returned to their table with two pints and banged one down in front of Angel, causing a substantial quantity of beer to slop over the side.  He slid back into their booth, sprawling against the seat, and took a long sip of his own drink before smacking his lips in satisfaction.

“That’s better.  If we’re going to chat about the old days, best not to do it sober.”

Angel knew that neither of them had been sober since the whiskey shots Spike had insisted they do half an hour previously, but felt that there was not much point in trying to argue in their current state.  Instead he just blinked blurrily at Spike and passed a hand over his face.

“What were we talking about again?”

“Your inability to resist me” Spike answered with a cheeky wink.

“ _My_ inability to resist _you_?  Angel laughed incredulously.  “ _You_ were the one who always followed _me_ around!”

“Because I wanted to learn the rules of vampire-dom, not because I _fancied_ you!”

Angel rolled his eyes.  “So, according to you, I fancied you but you never fancied me?  Hardly seems fair.  What was it about me that was so, so-” he waved his hands in the air, searching for the right word “-so _unfanciable_.”

“The hair”, Spike replied without missing a beat.  “It was terrible.  Looked like a family of rats had set up a nest on your head.  I, on the other hand, have always head bloody great hair.  Ergo, I am infinity more fanciable than you’ll ever be.”

“Did you say ‘ergo’?” asked Angel.  Spike ignored him and focused his attention on draining his pint.  Angel followed suit and found himself listing to the side as he attempted to get the last of the liquid from his glass.  The bar swan fuzzily in front of his eyes and his felt himself leaning in closer to Spike.

“You must have fancied me a little bit”, Angel slurred.  “Otherwise that night in Venice never would have happened.”

Spike pulled a face.  “That was an exceptional circumstance.  I got carried away with the atmosphere of the place.  It ani’t called the city of love for nothing.”

“Pretty sure that’s Paris.”

“Oh.  What’s Venice the city of then?”

Angel shrugged.  “Don’t know.  Water?”

Spike swayed to the right and his head came to land on Angel’s shoulder.  “Alright, maybe I fancied you a bit back then.”

Angel was aware that his next words were probably a bad idea before they even left his lips, but his brain didn’t relay the message in time and they tumbled out of his mouth anyway.

“And how about now?”

Spike squinted up at him.  “Well, your hair is just as bad, and you’re still an insufferable prick most of the time.”

“Thanks a lot”, Angel muttered.  He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but he felt oddly disappointed.  He went to move away, but Spike gripped his arm and pulled himself up so their faces were level.

“But sometimes, only sometimes mind, you can be alright.  And, hair excluded, I’d say you’re not _that_ bad looking.”

Angel tilted his head forward so his forehead brushed against Spike’s.  “Not that bad looking?”, he asked softly.

“Mmm, not bad at all”, Spike murmured.

Just as Angel realised that there was only the slightest gap between their lips, a bell clanged loudly from across the room and Spike jerked back.

“Five minute warning, boys!” announced a cheery waitress who had seemingly materialised out of nowhere and was now clearing away their empty glasses.  “You’ll have to take the party elsewhere”.  She tipped them a wink before bustling off to warn the other patrons of the bar’s impending closure.

Spike and Angel regarded each other awkwardly.

Angel gestured vaguely in the direction of the door.  “We’d better, er…”

Spike nodded brusquely.  “Right.  Come on then, Liam.”

Outside, they lingered by a street lamp.  “I should get home”, said Angel, although he made no motion to leave.

“Yeah, me too”.  Spike stared down at the pavement for a second, before raising his head and looking Angel straight in the eyes.  “Or, you could come back to my place.  Do what that waitress suggested, keep the party going.”

Even though vampires are incapable of displaying many of the most common signs of arousal - flushed skin, a quickening of breath - Angel could still tell from the glint in Spike’s eyes exactly what it was that was being offered.  He also knew what an incredibly bad idea it would be in the grand scheme of things, and how much he was likely to regret it when he woke up the following morning with a pounding headache and trail of prominent love bites.  But in the moment, with the pleasant buzz of alcohol running through his veins and the memory of that one night in Venice at the forefront of his mind, Angel just grinned.

“OK then.  After all, there’s a second time for everything.”


End file.
